The White House is Not a Business Opportunity

**Heather Cox Richardson** (0:07)
July 1st, 2026
Today, President Donald J. Trump took his first flight on the new Air Force One, a gift from Qatar. The Constitution prohibits presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. So Trump's announcement he would accept the $400 million plane from a foreign country raised a bipartisan outcry. The Pentagon then stepped in to say it would accept the plane. So, officially, Qatar gave the plane to the Pentagon, but a source told Eileen Grafe of CNN, they expect the plane, newly painted in red, white and blue like Trump's private jet, to leave the service of the United States when Trump leaves the White House, going to Trump's presidential library. Trump told reporters he was excited about the first flight. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. They just completed it. They made it appropriate for a president. That means the security and all the different bells and whistles they put on. Very complex stuff. But it's really quite something. Frankly, he said, we couldn't build a plane like this because we wouldn't be willing to spend the kind of money necessary. They spent top dollars. As Marina Dunbar of The Guardian noted, the plane is a retrofitted Boeing 747-8, built in the United States.
Yesterday, Sarah Blaski and Jonathan O'Connell of The Washington Post reported that last summer White House officials awarded a no-bid contract for the $500 million for the construction of a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to be. In turn, the company that got the contract, Clark Construction, told the White House it would award no-bid contracts to at least 11 subcontractors for services including demolition, fencing, excavation, and so on. To avoid requirements for competitive bidding, the White House said the ballroom was covered by the Office of the Executive Residence, which is responsible for routine repairs, buying furniture, and paying entertainment expenses. A federal judge has rejected this same justification for the demolition of the East Wing in the first place, saying the president's authority to make changes to the White House does not include knocking down one of its wings and building a ballroom in its place. At one point, Trump said officials from Clark Construction had offered to build his ballroom for free, but for months after he first knocked down the East Wing, he insisted that private donations would pay for the ballroom. On March 31st, Trump told reporters, This is taxpayer free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents. But on June 16th, Alasky and O'Connell reported that more than three weeks before Trump made that announcement, Clark had provided the White House with an estimate of $600 million for the project, with more than half of it coming from taxpayers.
On June 28th, Paul Son and Eric Lipton of the New York Times reported on a deal from September, 2025, in which Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trump secured from the president of Kazakhstan access to one of the largest untapped reserves of Tungsten in the world. An obscure US company, CAS Resources, won access to resources of a medal the US needs for missile warheads, fighter jets and computer chips. Before the deal went through, officials from the Trump administration advanced applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal funding for the company.
Then, an investment firm, partly owned by Trumps sons Don Jr. and Eric, took a 20% stake in a corporate entity related to the project, and the investment firm run by Lutnick's sons Brandon and Kyle, Cantor Fitzgerald, helped to raise $210 million for a related entity, likely pocketing millions in fees. The deal was signed on November 6 Son and Lipton used the Kazakhstan deal to illustrate the self-dealing of the Trumps and Lutnick's, identifying at least 14 companies with ties to the Trumps and Lutnick's that are working with the federal government on mining deals for materials on which the US depends.
The administration has either provided or is considering providing more than $8.9 billion in taxpayer money to those companies. White House Spokesperson Kush Desai denied any impropriety in the deal-making, saying in a statement, The only special interest guiding the Trump administration's decision-making is the best interest of the American people. Securing and reshoring America's critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick, along with the rest of the administration, continue to take historic action to safeguard America's national and economic security.
The Trumps have also done well over the past 18 months in the cryptocurrency business. Yesterday, a federal filing showed that Trump took in about $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures last year. Bernard Condon of the Associated Press reports that Trump made more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial Venture with his sons and Zach Witkoff, who is the venture's chief executive officer and the son of Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. Much of that money came when an investment fund associated with the leadership of the United Arab Emirates bought almost half of World Liberty Financial. Trump also made more than $600 million from meme coins stamped with his face.